Personally, I find all of this howling at VW a bit too simplistic. Let’s face it: if that many students had obtained degrees over that length of time by cheating, we would be howling at the educational system, wouldn’t we?

Clearly, VW has been less than angelic, but in demonising it as the only cause we may do ourselves a serious disservice by failing to identify and rectify circumstances that contributed to what it did. Now the lid is clean off this can of worms, the opportunity exists to make some changes to the entire emissions scene for the greater good.

Emission cheating is not new. Caterpillar, Cummins and others were busted in 1998 for doing exactly what VW has now done – and there have been many more offenders before and since. Why has nothing been learned from such instances? How is it the US emissions testing authorities appear to have done nothing for all this time to circumvent cheating?